During the late 18th century the American Revolution inspired a period of conquest, colonization, ongoing warfare, enslavement, and relocation of Indigenous populations.
[1] This forced relocation disrupted the daily lives of the Native populations and caused widespread instability among them including increased poverty and homelessness.
As a result, many Indigenous parents were unable to properly house, feed, clothe, and support their children, causing a further cycle of instability across generations.
[3][5] Through the emergence of modernization, increased infrastructure, and urbanization of once-rural areas, in the late 19th through 21st centuries the vulnerability of Indigenous populations in situations of sexual violence and sex trafficking heightened.
[7] This blend of two once separated worlds also involved the forced removal of Native American women and girls out of their homes on reservations, and into the sex trade.
[9] Patterns of sex trafficking are common in Midwest states such as North and South Dakota that have large fracking camps and oil companies placed near reservations.
Exposure to the outside, modernized world caused increased drug and alcohol consumption of these Native populations, especially since a common tactic for these traffickers was to get their victims addicted to hard substances, making it nearly impossible for them to escape.
[6] Initially, the idea of sex trafficking was foreign to the Native populations, as they had never seen such a practice before encountering the modernization of the neighboring cities, so they often did not recognize that what was being done to them was wrong.
[8] The high levels of poverty, homelessness, substance abuse, and unstable home lives made Native populations vulnerable to the advances of sex traffickers.
[10] Oftentimes, the pimps will recognize an Indigenous person in an unstable home life such as extreme poverty or an abusive family and will promise safety and a stable income, using words such as a "modeling career" or the "entertainment industry" to hide the sexual nature of the sex trade.
[1] Due to the high vulnerability of these Indigenous populations, victims are also afraid to come forward out of fear of retaliation from their traffickers such as physical abuse, threats, and removal of their basic needs that their pimps often provided.
[7] The investigators from these organizations are often less concerned with the case and are not socially or cognitively connected to the community, leading to the increased distrust of Native populations towards law enforcement, and the decreased rate of reporting of sexual crimes.